For me, the hardest videos to watch are the ones in which people pray, because in so many cases you can see that they really do believe that God will hear them, will intervene, will save them. But in the videos we have here at the Academy, he invariably chose not to.
I often wonder if his silence is proof that he isn’t there. That’s the easy answer, of course. The intellectually facile one, but still, it’s tempting to retreat into skepticism when you see such suffering responded to with silence.
Sometimes I envy people who find a way to live in quiet denial of what we as a species are capable of doing to each other. It’d be so much easier to live with that kind of naivety, closing one eye to the tears of the world, thinking that everything has a Disneyfied ending, a silver lining, a sunset to ride into.
A few months ago when I was speaking with Lien-hua about this, she told me not to dwell on the negative so much.
“I can’t pretend that the world isn’t what it is,” I’d said.
“What do you mean?”
“That these things I see don’t happen, that life is better than this.”
A small pause. “But can you stop pretending that it’s worse?”
It took me a long time to reply. “I’ll try,” I’d said.
And I still am.
I turned on the projector, tapped the DVD’s play button, but the first frame-the one in which the killer zoomed in on the young boy’s frightened eyes staring into the camera-today that image alone was too much for me.
I couldn’t do this. I needed to look away from suffering, at least for the moment.
So I shut off the projector.
Plan B.
Astrid knew that Brad had money; he’d never kept that a secret, although he hadn’t explained where it was from, and she’d never pried.
She’d suspected he’d stolen or extorted it until she saw him working on the computer system at the research facility yesterday. Now she began to wonder if he might actually have earned it as a computer programmer.
Well, what mattered was not where it had come from but what they could do with it if they needed to.
Disappear.
Or, if she needed to, she could do that herself.
Yes, she knew his bank account’s pin number. She’d found it jotted on one of his statements two months ago. And this secret knowledge was a sweet and subtle thing.
Now, as she pulled into the parking lot at work, she thought of what would happen to the woman at 3:00 p.m. as the game moved toward its climax.
Tessa had agreed to meet Paul Lansing on the steps of the Library of Congress at 10:30 sharp. And now as she stepped onto the Amtrak train that would take her to the city, she felt somewhat like she was running away.
She told herself that as soon as she got some answers to the questions she hadn’t felt comfortable bringing up while Patrick was around, she would explain everything to him and things would get back to normal between them.
Through Paul’s emails over the last few weeks she’d found out where he grew up-St. Paul, Minnesota. His pastimes-sculpture (pretty cool), hunting (definitely uncool), hiking, carpentry, and organic gardening (that’s better). His birthday-September 9. And so on.
And on.
But the core stuff went a lot deeper.
That’s the stuff she needed to know.
The train doors closed, and she took a seat.
She’d chosen a T-shirt that left the scars on her right arm visible, the scars she’d given to herself when she was into cutting. A man stared at her now, his eyes lingering on her arm, and then on the oxymoronic words on her shirt: “Anarchy Rules.”
She handled his curiosity with a steady gaze, locking eyes with him until he looked away.
Tessa had saved the biggest questions for a face-to-face meeting with her dad: How long did you date Mom before you slept with her? Did you love her? How come you live by yourself in the mountains? What are you running away from?
It seemed beyond weird to her that a man who lived without a phone or running water, a guy who’d been emailing her from a six-year-old borrowed laptop, had suddenly decided to hop on a plane and fly to the nation’s capital just to see some sculptures that one of his friends had made. She’d have to ask him about that too.
He’d said he didn’t know that Christie ever had her child, that he thought she’d gone through with the abortion she’d been planning. That’s what he’d said, but Tessa didn’t believe him. She’d found the postcard he sent to her mother only a few years ago. If he kept tabs on her mom, how could he not have known about her?
And so, perhaps the most important question of alclass="underline" why didn’t you ever come to see me after you two broke up?
And then there was Patrick.
She tried to think of a way to politely cancel lunch with him without making him suspicious. And without lying. She’d done enough of that already.
With a lurch, the train left to take Tessa Bernice Ellis to her father.
Class had started five minutes ago.
There were a number of seminars running concurrently this morning, and though officially the National Academy course didn’t begin until Monday, the NA students who’d already arrived were invited to attend any of the lectures this week that they thought would be most helpful to them.
I’d been hoping Cheyenne might sit in on my class so I could thank her for taking Tessa home last night-at least that’s the reason I told myself. But when class began and she wasn’t in the room, I realized it was probably a good thing, since she has a way of monopolizing my attention and there was already plenty on my mind.
So, no videos today. Just discussion.
I’d kicked things off by telling my students that understanding the process an offender undertakes in planning and carrying out his crime is vital to eliminating suspects.
“Excuse me,” a woman in the front row said, two fingers flagged in the air. I’d met her earlier in the week: Annette Larotte, a National Academy student from Houston. A homicide detective. Tall-5'11". Brunette. Deep, reflective eyes.
“Yes?”
“What was number four? From last night?”
“Number four?”
“At the panel discussion you said there were four premises underlying geospatial investigation. But you only had time to list three before the discussion was cut short. What was number four?”
I quickly reviewed the first three: “Number one-timing and location. Most crimes occur in the offender’s awareness space. Two-rational decisions lead to the criminal act. Three-least amount of effort principle.”
When I paused to take a breath, Annette finished my thought for me: “Offenders try to save time and money just like everyone.”
I nodded. “Exactly. So here’s number four: progression. With each successive crime, offenders become more efficient and experienced, learn from their mistakes, develop tastes and preferences for specific activities over others. They also learn from other people-criminal associates, research, observations-and as they do, two things happen: they become more competent, and typically, they become overconfident, which can lead to carelessness.”
A few people took notes, Annette nodded her thanks to me, and I went on, “So to get us rolling today, tell me: what are the secrets to committing a perfect murder?”
The students began by noting the obvious: 1. take precautions to avoid leaving physical evidence, 2. contaminate the scene with other people’s skin cells, bodily fluids, or DNA to confound investigators, 3. dispose of the body outdoors where insect activity, scavengers, and the weather will help disperse and destroy physical evidence-or better yet, don’t allow the body to be found at all, 4. never murder someone you have a close relationship with, but rather choose someone whose disappearance will go unnoticed (runaways, transients, vagrants, hitchhikers, prostitutes, etc.).
Self-evident, rudimentary ideas.
I knew that the students in my class could do better, and I challenged them to go deeper.